Meet Lisle Engle | Singer, Songwriter, Sound Designer and Re-Recording Mixer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lisle Engle and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lisle, have you ever found yourself in a spot where you had to decide whether to give up or keep going? How did you make the choice?
I’ve been singing and playing music all of my life. I sang on my first record in 5th grade and sang with the Symphony in Savannah, GA where I grew up. I played lead trumpet in a jazz band, sang in the state champion barbershop quartet, performed in tons of musical theater and eventually ended up fronting rock bands in high school. I then took that to college with me in Boston, met up with some great players and ended up moving out to Los Angeles with the dream of making it big. I’ve played all over this town in multiple incarnations of lineups through the years and I’ve released solo recordings, as well as developed interactive music conceptual albums. Music and songwriting just seems to be a constant in my life that I keep turning to as a way to express my thoughts about this world. There was certainly a time when I was rather down that I didn’t “make it big” and tour the world like Zepplin or U2, but as time has moved on and I have fallen into my post audio career, met my wife, gotten married, had a kid… life out on the road seems like something that would not be conducive to where my head space is now. I’m certainly glad that I don’t have a record company exec breathing down my neck asking for certain material that they can shovel into the machine at my ripe old age of 55. Music has become it’s own reward for me and now that I have mastery of all of the studio tools that I need to produce my own music, I have achieved a level of creative freedom that seems to suit my lifestyle very well So I keep going!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My entire work life, with the possible exception of waiting tables in college, has always revolved around creative endeavors supported underneath by my penchant for computer technology. My first job ever was acting in children shows when I was 16. At 17 and 18 I was playing in a band in Savannah, GA called the Vital Signs where I made some pretty good money for the time and it opened my eyes to the idea that you can both do something you enjoy and make some money at it.

From middle school I had already cultivated a love for computers starting with Commodore Pets and TRS-80 Model II’s. In college, I discovered Macs and desktop publishing which greatly aided me with promo for my band and for completing my Comm school projects at Boston University. My band at the time, The Promise relocated to Los Angeles in the Fall of 1989 and I begin to use those computer skills to make money there doing layouts for a publication called Rock City News where I met a lot of their club owner advertisers and started producing their ads as well. I then worked for a med size ad agency where I garnered more skills in design and layout and printing tech, so I purchased a Mac II to keep up.

Right about that time, Digidesign, now AVID, released some of the first Pro Digital Audio interfaces and sampler card for Mac and I just knew that was the direction I wanted to go. The Promise was in the studio on a spec deal at the time and the owner told me that he was going to start working on movies, covering all of the post audio. I saw that as my chance to get the gear that I wanted for music, but still be able to justify what was then, the biggest purchase of my life… $10K for the Sound Tools and Samplecell hardware for my Mac II. Mind you that I didn’t even have a car at the time. I drove a little Honda 250 motorcycle around LA for the first two years I was here. I could have bought a car, but I knew that the gear would get me the work I needed to buy a car one day.

So I started on some Roger Corman movies and that eventually led me to an amazing company called Digital Sound and Picture under a guy named John Ross who had the vision of how computers could, and eventually did take over the Post Production Industry. Digital Sound and Picture was a family of young, hungry kids ready to jump in to an old analog workflow and reinvent it with computers and servers, which we all did, and many of us DSP Alumni are top Sound Pros in Hollywood today!

It used to be in the 80’s that in order to get A-level recordings, you needed a ton of money or a spec deal to get into a full blown studio. Digital tech began to wear that away and I was able to use my professional tools to create my music using this more DIY approach. After The Promise ran out of gas, I joined a strange CDROM project that is to my knowledge, the worlds first interactive concept album. The “game” was called Welcome To The Future and we sold about 10K of them at Comp USA and such. I have recently re-released this for Android mobile and you can find it on the Play Store. It was compared to Pink Floyd at Pompeii by Entertainment Weekly Magazine and is a psychedelic treasure hunt type of experience with some very atmospheric music and themes of alien ruins left on earth and such. In 2007 I released a solo album called California Miles and more recently, last year, I released an album called Medicine Man that you can find on your favorite music provider, which I also made 6 videos for. The Medicine Man record is a collection of my thoughts about the crazy 2020 Covid pandemic and the issues that arose that year.

I continue to follow this same path today. I work at Warner Brothers as a Re-Recording Mixer for Television and Feature Films, and I still write and record music using all the same technology, mostly Avid Pro Tools and Apple Logic. It also works out well for taxes as all of the gear I buy is a write off for my business. Combining these skill sets has definitely provided me with a path to do something that I enjoy as well as make a nice living at it. Win – Win…. As they say.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’d say that a concert at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank or The Greek Theater in Griffith Park would be at the top of my list. These are smaller venues and easier to get in and out of than some of the bigger ones like the Hollywood Bowl or Staples Center etc. I also love to hike in the mountains in California. There’s tons of places close by… I like to go daily if I can find the time… or a few hour drive can put you in Yosemite or some other similarly amazing spot.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The person who I consider my mentor is Sherry Klein. She is a bad ass female pioneer in the world of recording and mixing in Los Angeles and was one of the first women in the game, I was referred to her by a guy at Digidesign back in the day and we had a coffee on Melrose and got along very well. Eventually our timing worked out in that she needed a new mix partner and she happened to see me walking down from a hike in Runyon Canyon in Hollywood right around the corner from her apartment. She honked and stopped me and told me about the gig and I signed on. We mixed together for six or seven years on tons of different TV projects including Burn Notice, Bosch and Arrested Development. Sherry was approaching her retirement age when I was offered a mix chair at Warner Brothers, which is something you can’t really turn down so I called to her to ask her if it was OK if I jumped from our partnership a bit early to take advantage of the offer. She gave me her blessing and basically called WB and told them that they were crazy if they didn’t give me the chair over the other candidates. So I am forever in her debt… not just for the opportunity that she gave me in becoming her partner, but for her friendship and confidence in my abilities to send me off to the top of my game at a major studio. She’s the bomb!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WTTFgame?s=20&t=6wQZ-hl2qvIwn_SMfFUkew

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075876446059

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7fJeUhAwujYb3cpps4WCyQ

Image Credits
The pictures with the big rusty pipe were taken by Yuri Reese.